Of all the places to argue that only the government should be trusted with guns, Robert Francis O'Rourke picked…Kent State University. Kent State ... to continue to promise to send armed representatives of the government to people's towns and homes to force them to surrender their property. This isn't just irony, but tragedy in the making.
"“The crackle of the rifle volley cut the suddenly still air,” John Kifner, a New York Times writer who was on the scene, wrote. “It appeared to go on, as a solid volley, for perhaps a full minute or a little longer.” Kifner watched as the students next to him fell to the ground, one shot in the head, another hit in the back, and saw them bleed out onto the concrete of their school parking lot.
“I was a white hippie boy, and then I saw exit wounds from M1 rifles out of the backs of two people I knew,” another witness, Gerald Casale, who would later become a member of the band Devo, recalled. “None of us knew, none of us could have imagined… They shot into a crowd that was running away from them!”
Over the next few days, 4 million people came out in protest of the Kent State Massacre. Anti-Vietnam campaigns became bigger than ever, and the way the US responded to protests changed forever. "
Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
"“The crackle of the rifle volley cut the suddenly still air,” John Kifner, a New York Times writer who was on the scene, wrote. “It appeared to go on, as a solid volley, for perhaps a full minute or a little longer.” Kifner watched as the students next to him fell to the ground, one shot in the head, another hit in the back, and saw them bleed out onto the concrete of their school parking lot.
“I was a white hippie boy, and then I saw exit wounds from M1 rifles out of the backs of two people I knew,” another witness, Gerald Casale, who would later become a member of the band Devo, recalled. “None of us knew, none of us could have imagined… They shot into a crowd that was running away from them!”
Over the next few days, 4 million people came out in protest of the Kent State Massacre. Anti-Vietnam campaigns became bigger than ever, and the way the US responded to protests changed forever. "
Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
